This invention relates generally to a heat dissipation technique for an integrated circuit assembly, and more particularly to a technique for dissipating heat from an integrated circuit device.
Integrated circuit devices, microprocessors and other related computer components are becoming more and more powerful with increasing capabilities, resulting in increasing amounts of heat generated from these components. Packaged units and integrated circuit device sizes of these components are decreasing or remaining the same, but the amount of heat energy given off by these components per unit volume, mass, surface area or any other such metric is increasing. In current packaging techniques, heat sinks typically consist of a flat base plate, which is mounted to the integrated circuit device on one side. The heat sinks further include an array of fins running perpendicular to the flat base plate on the other side. Generally, the integrated circuit devices (which are the heat sources) have a significantly smaller footprint size than the flat base plate of the heat sink. The flat base plate of the heat sink has a large footprint, that requires more motherboard real estate than the integrated circuit device in contact therewith. The larger size of the base plate causes the outermost part of the base plate that is not directly in contact with the integrated circuit device to have a significantly lower temperature than the part of the base plate that is directly in contact with the integrated circuit device. Furthermore, as computer-related equipment becomes more powerful, more components are being placed inside the equipment and on the motherboard which further requires more motherboard real estate. In addition, the base plate of prior art heat sink designs is at the same level as the integrated circuit device to which it is attached. Consequently, the flat base plate configuration of the heat sink generally ends up consuming more motherboard real estate than the integrated circuit device on which it is mounted. Also, current design practice dictates that the fins extend to the edge of the flat base plate, and in order to grow the fins laterally the flat base plate also has to grow. As a result, the larger footprint size of the base plate prevents other motherboard components, such as low-cost capacitors, from being positioned around or on the microprocessor. Thus, the large amounts of heat produced by many such integrated circuits and the increasing demand for motherboard real estate need to be taken into consideration when designing the integrated circuit mounting and packaging devices. Also, the current manufacturing processes require cutting a large block of metal, and further machining one individual angular gap between fins at a time to produce a heat sink. This is generally a difficult, time consuming, and expensive process. Further the machining process results in wasting a lot of material.
For the reasons stated above, and for other reasons stated below which will become apparent to those skilled in the art upon reading and understanding the present specification, there is a need in the art for a low-mass enhanced heat dissipation device and method that has minimal lateral heat spreading resistance, and a high performance fin area above adjacent components. Also, there is a need for a heat dissipation device that does not consume more motherboard real estate than the integrated circuit device to which it is attached, to accommodate low-cost electronic components needing to be positioned around the microprocessor. Further, there is also a need for an easier, less time consuming, and cost-effective manufacturing process that does not result in wasting a lot of material in producing the heat dissipation device.